President Barack Obama was not very warmly greeted by many people in the government when he first took office in 2009. He was met with heavy resistance from Republican lawmakers. Citizens organized political groups like the Tea Party to actively oppose the president and everything he stood for. The Republican leadership held meetings almost right away claiming that obstructionism and preventing the president from gaining a second term were the main goals of the party instead of governing or making the country better. This resulted in some very unusual moments where Republican lawmakers suddenly stopped supporting issues and laws they previously championed just to obstruct President Obama from getting anything done.
Something even worse that seems to have happened since 2009 is a campaign designed to spread false information and even conspiracy theories about President Obama. This started early on when people like Donald Trump began claiming Obama was not an American citizen. Trump even sent out investigators to Hawaii to research his birth only to come up with absolutely nothing. Conspiracy theorists claimed for years that President Obama wanted to destroy the country and that he was a secret Muslim bent on performing terrorist acts. The conspiracies and rumors grew over his first and second terms.
People who have an unhealthy hatred and obsessions with the president started turning normal events that went on every year in the country into things that only Obama would do to destroy American. Regular military exercises like Jade Helm 15 were said to be the start of the Obama takeover of America. Some claimed that a string of Wal-Mart closings were actually done to convert the buildings into death camps for citizens. The conspiracies were never real and never came to pass. President Obama never tried to repeal the Second Amendment. Gun rights have only grown looser under his presidency. He has not tried to take over and run for a third term.
This has not stopped many hardcore Republicans and Right Wing activists from proactively spreading false information to make people think the economy is collapsing. This can be clearly seen when it comes to the deficit of the country. Republican lawmakers have been outraged for years over supposedly trillion-dollar deficits that are destroying the country. Some just lie stating that the deficit has been rising and taking away jobs. Even the figures that some people have used are grossly overstated.
It will come as news to many who believe those lies that the national deficit has dropped by over a trillion dollars since President Obama took office. The deficit now stands at just around $439 billion and not the trillions Conservative pundits regularly reference. The deficit is now at a low that was not seen since before the recession in 2007. If you look at the deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product, or GDP, then it is the lowest it has been for around five decades. The deficit is just about 2.5 percent of the GDP. This should be great news to Republicans who were so concerned about the deficit yet the stream of misleading information about the economy just continues.
Not all economists agree that a low deficit is necessarily a good thing. Growth in the country is still a little slow. Some believe that the country should be borrowing more money to benefit from extremely low interest rates. That money could be used to create infrastructure jobs or to encourage more hiring within businesses. Other economists think that the deficit is at an acceptable level or needs to be lowered even further right now. The fact remains that President Obama has lowered the deficit by a trillion dollars and deserves credit for that achievement.